Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC), in collaboration with its customer service IT company, Toyota Media Service Corporation, has developed a tool to support easy home-based charging of the Prius PHV plug-in hybrid vehicle, due for launch next year, and electric vehicles (EVs). Toyota Housing Corporation, TMC’s house construction and design subsidiary, will start sales of the tool, the H2V (home-to-vehicle) Manager, in Japan in January 2012.

PHV or EV users can connect (wired or wireless) to the H2V Manager from a home PC, television or smartphone to set or adjust their PHV or EV charging start time, as well as check household electric power consumption. The same operations can be performed remotely with a smartphone, through the Toyota Smart Center.

When necessary, the H2V Manager automatically interrupts PHV or EV charging when household power demand spikes, and then resumes charging when there is spare power capacity. This function prevents circuit breakers from cutting off power supply when a large number of home appliances are used simultaneously, pushing electricity consumption beyond the home's maximum voltage.

Toyota Housing Corporation plans to sell a line-up of household PHV and EV chargers consisting of a standard charger, a wall-mounted charger and a pole-mounted charger. The H2V Manager, compatible with all these chargers, has a suggested retail price of ¥52,290 (US$679)&madsh;including tax, excluding installation. The expected starting price of a H2V Manager and charger package is ¥157,500 yen (US$2,045),including installation and tax.

A unit of the H2V Manager will be on display at the Toyota booth in the Smart Mobility City 20112 exhibition at the 42nd Tokyo Motor Show to be held from 30 November 30 through 3 December.

Separately, in the UK, LeasePlan has become the first UK leasing company to trial the production prototype Toyota Prius Plug-in hybrid prior to its launch in the autumn next year.

The loan will enable LeasePlan to undertake a one-week internal trial before making it available to interested clients on a two-week basis. By having the opportunity of advance testing LeasePlan will be able to assess residual value and on-road performance ahead of the vehicle launch next year.

Comments

There are no technical reasons why V2H&G intelligent, wired and wireless, affordable charging units, cannot be mass produced to suit the needs of every home and local grid. Future intelligent charge units should automatically sense the EV charge required, the home power use level, the grid lowest rates and grid available power and react accordingly without external interference.

My post was truncated. This will be useful for distributed energy homes - most EV owners will set their charger to kick on when rates/demand are lowest, i.e. late night.

Yes EP, but demand side does not discard supply side - utils will vary the $$/kWh dependent on "their" demand. Meaning the customer dances to util's tune.

We are building a system that dances to the customer's tune. And simultaneously costs less than $.01/kWh, raises national security, provides JOBS, grows manufacturing, and reduces environmental damage caused by massive grid intrusion. Oh, there's zero pollution, so if you're an AGW alarmist, you can stand down.

Perceiving utilities as differently motivated than oil refiners is naive.